I stopped by the liquor store on my lunch break and saw him standing beside a display of pineapple ale.
It was our first date and I was fifteen minutes late.
Thwack! Another bird strike.
On my walk I approach a group of kids who are waiting for the school bus.
One afternoon in the early 1970s our family got takeout from McDonald’s.
We were a dozen teenagers determined to fulfill an ancient tradition.
The house was in chaos: a dozen six-year-olds like myself shrieking, shoving, leaping amongst balloons, paper streamers, and spilled M&M’s.
The nurse wheeled our child away and my husband held the wall up so he would not crumble.
Frustrated, I slow my pace as the wind whips the words from my ears.
I skim my father’s vanity-published, dictated, ghost-written memoir, as short and overcompensated as a two-block parade …
On our scooter ride home, my nine-year-old daughter asked, “Would it upset you if someone messed with your things?”
I couldn’t have known that her shoes would be important.
I push backward gently and lift my feet from the ground, the swing holding me tight.
It’s a Wednesday morning. Twenty-four bullets from a National Guard .50 caliber machine gun rip into Tanya Blanding’s four-year-old body.
Outside, glass-blue sky and air-sucking heat, avocado arms reached up from saguaros with spiked, crimson-tipped ocotillo neighbors.
The earring is antique gold with garnets and seed pearls.
“Do you see that handsome man over there?”
Once the mail carrier left, I rushed to yank out the envelope.
The popcorn man stands on the same corner.
My mother-in-law looks fragile, her arms mottled from blood draws and IVs.